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Boston, MA
‘It still doesn’t feel real’: At the Skating Club of Boston, grief looms over the daily training grind – The Boston Globe
Weeks after the tragedy, the club is weathering waves of anguish all the while doing what has made it a standard-bearer for figure skating in America for more than a century. There is palpable grief, to be sure, but also the ever present grind of athletes striving for greatness.
“We keep them in our hearts while we do it, and it feels like we’re still skating together,” said LoPinto’s son, 16-year-old Zachary, who is the top-ranked male figure skater in New England, and fourth nationally, for his age group.
Han was returning from Wichita, Kan., where her 13-year-old daughter, Jinna, who was also killed in the crash, had attended a development camp following the US Figure Skating Championships. Han and her daughter never made it back to New England. Neither did youth skater Spencer Lane, his mother Christine Lane, and Evegenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, both former elite figure skaters who coached at the club.
The LoPintos often traveled with the Hans, and Donna LoPinto considered the possibility of members of her family being on that flight “a little” haunting.
The two families became tight because they were at this Norwood rink six days a week for their children.
Indeed, the club’s three-rink facility, on a slice of land wedged between Interstate 95 and Route 1, anchored much of the existences of the six victims. Take Han for instance. LoPinto, who considers the Hans to be family rather than friends, said of Jin, “Pretty much the rink was her life.”
Zachary and Jinna shared aspirations of becoming truly elite in their sport.
For the LoPintos, that meant moving from Long Island to Canton to give Zachary the best chance at success. He has trained at the Skating Club of Boston for the last four years. LoPinto’s husband still lives part time in New York, where he owns an insurance agency. Zachary’s commitment to the sport means he attends school online. Jinna, whom Zachary considered to be a little sister, had a similar academic arrangement.
Zachary’s six-day-a-week training regimen is vigorous. Many days he has three 80-minute sessions on the ice, in addition to off-ice jumping, the weight room, and physical therapy. Consistency, he said, is chief among his challenges. Some days, he feels fantastic about his jumps; others, he feels as though nothing is working. And the higher the jumps, the more inconsistent the results, he said. This is his life.
“I feel free on the ice,” he said.
Out on the ice during a recent weekday afternoon, a handful of skaters worked on their craft. This specific rink, named after Tenley E. Albright, a Newton native who became the first American female skater to win an Olympic gold medal, in 1956, has a capacity for 2,500 spectators and is designated for the highest performing skaters.
To the uninitiated, it all looks effortless at first as the skaters glide in elegant arcs, punctuated by spins or jumps. Then occasionally someone lands awkwardly and ends up on their backside. And the truth becomes real: This can be taxing work.
Locally, figure skating is a tight-knit community. The Norwood club has about 1,200 members, about 60 percent of whom are “active skaters,” a spokesperson said. It’s one of only three facilities in the nation owned and operated by a figure skating club. The facility opened in 2020, following decades at a rink on Soldiers Field Road.
Covering one wall on the side of the rink is a massive timeline chronicling the club’s rich history. Its narrative is intertwined with the development of figure skating in the US. The club was founded in 1912. By 1963, it had produced eight female figure skating national champions.
The display also covers past heartbreak. A 1961 plane crash in Belgium killed the entire US skating team, including 10 members of the Boston club, who were on their way to the world championships.
The last photo in the timeline shows the smiling Shishkova and Naumov, the two coaches who died in the D.C. plane crash. They are flanking their son, Maxim Naumov, who was competing at the US Championships in Kansas but traveled home Sunday before his parents.
Becky Stump, the club’s coaching director, choked up when talking about that family and the club’s culture. Shishkova, she said, was “an absolute sweetheart,” while Naumov “really cared about his skaters, not just as skaters but as people, which is not always the case with coaches”
Originally from Russia, Shishkova and Naumov won the pairs title at the 1994 world championships and competed twice in the Olympics. They were also “good people,” Stump said.
She recalled she wanted to ask Shishkova about where she got her hair done because “her hair always looked so good.” But coaches at the club are perpetually busy, and she missed her chance.
Stump texted Naumov while he was in Wichita, saying she hoped his son, Maxim, would skate well at the US Championships, and included a prayer hands emoji. After Maxim finished fourth, Naumov messaged her: ”God heard your prayers, Becky.”
“Now, I’m reading it and I’m like ‘Oh God,’” she said.
Maxim has not trained since the crash that took his parents’ lives, Stump said, but he has taught some lessons at the club.
Elite figure skaters, she said, can be adept at compartmentalization.
“Skaters learn to be in the moment when you have to be in the moment and when you’re not that’s when you have your space to cry, but it’s been really tough,” she said, especially since many are still in their competitive season. She pointed out Jinna Han’s coach out on the ice. She is coaching a pairs team that is bound for the World Championships next month at Boston’s TD Garden.
And while the sport often forces its athletes to learn how to deal with deep disappointment, there is still pervasive anxiety attached to the recent catastrophe. Stump mentioned a trip that some of the club’s members will take to Colorado Springs for an upcoming competition.
“They’re all scared,” she said, referencing the impending plane ride. “Parents, skaters, everybody.”
In a hallway near the rink is an informal tribute to Spencer Lane and Jinna Han. The memorial, located where the two used to lace up their skates before stepping out onto the ice, includes teddy bears, flowers, cards, a hand drawing, candy, and framed photos of each skater.
The club expects to have a handful of its members in the mix to qualify for the next Winter Olympics. The organization also thinks multiple Olympic cycles ahead. One pre-teen on the ice, the club spokesperson said, is a prospect for the 2034 Winter Olympics in Milan.
Zachary LoPinto’s long-term goal is to qualify for the Olympics at least once, maybe twice. More immediately, there is the pain of loss.
His mother recalled Jin Han as selfless. “If you wanted to sit, she’d give you her chair. If you wanted food, she’d give you her food first before she would feed herself,” she said
Han’s husband, Joon, still comes to the rink for a hug, a coffee, or a chat. He pushes Zachary, who considers him an uncle, to excel, said Donna LoPinto.
“Some days,” she said, “are harder than others.”
Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.
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Books
Mass General nurse-turned-author Karen Winn brings Beacon Hill to life in her latest book. Add this to your beach bag.
Massachusetts General Hospital nurse-turned-author Karen Winn often writes in the Boston Athenaeum, watching tours pass by.
One day, in 2023, she joined one. And the seed for her next novel was planted.
“We passed by an oil portrait of Thomas Handasyd Perkins, a major benefactor to the Athenaeum in the 1800s. The docent alluded to this dark history as to how he’d amassed a large portion of his fortune in the opium trade,” she tells me.
“The tour group moved on — but I was stuck there thinking. I went home and fell down this rabbit-hole of research and learned, to my surprise, just how many of the Boston Brahman families made their fortune in the opium trade. It was fascinating.”
I went down a similar rabbit-hole. The Boston Brahmin opium fortunes are well-documented, including a past Harvard Art Museum exhibit, articles, books and website info including, speaking of Perkins, the Perkins School for the Blind.
Winn, who lives on Beacon Hill and was in a secret society (I asked) added bits and pieces from her own life into the novel-creating mixing bowl: What if there was a secret society built on old opium money in Beacon Hill, and a Mass General nurse was somehow involved?
“The Society” was born.
If you’re looking for a Boston-set page-turner — an “alternate universe Beacon Hill,” as Winn puts it — to kick off your summer reading, add this suspense to your beach bag.
Nutshell: The Knox, standing proudly on Mount Vernon Street in Beacon Hill, houses meetings of a secret society. Some in Boston believe it’s an elite social club — others believe it hides something sinister.
When Boston antique dealer Vivian Lawrence sees her family fortune vanish, she turns to a family legend that ties her to the Knox, seeking a way into the exclusive secret society.
Taylor Adams, a 20-something Mass General ER nurse who recently moved to Boston, becomes almost obsessed with old-moneyed Vivian, “a creature of wealth,” after Vivian lands in the ER one night. When Vivian disappears from Mass General without a trace, Taylor’s search for answers pulls her into the Knox and its dark history…
What interested me — before I knew anything of Winn’s backstory— was that it felt like it was written by someone who just moved to Boston and was in awe of the city.
Living here, we might think of Rachel Dratch and Jimmy Fallon and Denise and Sully in those old “Boston Teen” SNL sketches, or Casey Affleck as the “King of Dunkin” as summing us up, at least in terms of how outsiders see us.
But Taylor, the Mass General nurse, almost fetishizes Boston, and old-moneyed New Englanders she imagines walking down every street.
Example: when old-Boston-money Vivian lands in the ER: Taylor “swallows, a flurry of excitement building in her chest… she envisioned that the city would be teeming with these ladies… That she would get to move among their world, learn from them, drink in their fanciness… letting that old New England generational wealth rub off on her until she glimmered with something of its gold dust…It is Boston, after all: the city of cobblestones and beauty, of Harvard and MIT, of sophistication and history.”
Winn, who grew up in New Jersey, moved to Boston 20 years ago after meeting her Boston-native husband Gil at UPenn. They now live in the Beacon Hill area with their two kids and 100-pound (yup) Bernedoodle.
After two decades here, she’s still “in awe.”
“I grew up in a 5,000-person town in New Jersey. When I came to Boston, I was struck by this beautiful city. Beacon Hill is one of the most historic and charming neighborhoods,” she tells me. “Living here, one might almost be inured to it, but I have this awe. I’m always struck by the cobblestone streets and the gaslit lamps.”
Winn even started a TikTok account for @theknoxsociety, documenting life on Beacon Hill.
This is Winn’s second novel, after 2022’s “Our Little World.” But “I’m not an overnight success by any shape or form,” she says with a laugh.
“I was a nurse and a nurse practitioner, but always loved writing and wrote on the side,” says Winn, who left Mass General in 2010. “It’s a typical writer’s story: I had hundreds of rejections for short stories.”
One of those rejections — from JFK Jr.’s “George Magazine” in 2000 — actually landed her in Newsweek recently.
I called Winn to talk opium, strange graveyard tour, a terrifying house fire, TikTok, and more.
Taylor arrives in Boston with a burning curiosity about the city. “What is Boston? Who are these people?” questions swimming in her head.
“Absolutely. When I came to Boston, I was so struck by this beautiful city. In my head, I could very clearly see the Knox building: The front is on Mount Vernon Street, and the back, I imagined to look like Branch Street. Branch isn’t the back of Mount Vernon, so I gave it a fictional name.”
I love that level of detail, though. No one outside Boston — or maybe even Beacon Hill— would ever know: oh, Branch Street isn’t in back of Mount Vernon. You have other specific references, like dining at 1928.
“I almost wish I’d been a little craftier [with adding more]. For instance, at one point I had Taylor get her knives sharpened at Blackstone’s. And it was just too much detail, so I pared it down. But sometimes I’m like, ‘Oh, I wish I kept that!’ [laughs]”
[laughs] That’s how it goes.
I don’t think I realized the effect each reference would have. There are book clubs now that tour Beacon Hill and go to spots mentioned. A few toured the Boston Atheneum, or dined at 1928. I didn’t realize how much people would connect to the sense of place. It feels like it’s been embraced by people in Boston, which is so fun.
Now 1928 has a cocktail named for your book. What are more specific inspirations that went into the novel?
“For the Knox, I took inspiration from The Somerset Club and The ‘Quin — the beautiful room with fireplaces and ornate details.
“And I was in a secret society in college: Tabard Society at UPenn.”
Wow, what was that like?
“I can’t tell you. [laughs]”
[laughs] Fair enough.
“But I loved that experience. When I was rushing [or trying to get in] you’d find out if you were invited by getting handwritten notes slipped under your door. I tapped into that with The Knox sending notes.”
You said your husband went with you on midnight strolls through Boston?
“Yes! I dragged him to some graveyard tours. We did one that —it was funny, because I’m not sure how I found it, but it definitely, like, wasn’t very legit.”
[laughs] OK.
“It was just us and this guy — we weren’t allowed inside any of the cemeteries. We’d watch the tours go on the inside, and the three of us would be standing on the outside. [laughs]”
[laughs] Amazing.
“My husband’s like, ‘Where did you find this guy?’ I don’t know.”
[laughs] This feels like a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode.
“It was quite an experience [laughs] And then, of course, I had to go back. We had to go back and do an official tour.
“And I toured the Nichols House Museum in Beacon Hill, which was neat to see another historic building and learn about family that lived there. I toured the Forbes House Museum in Milton. Forbes family was one of the Brahman families, they made their fortune in the opium trade.
“Also we had lived, at one point in the South End, and actually had a house fire. We were home at the time. Luckily, we were fine. But our house was a total loss.”
Oh my god.
“We each grabbed a kid and ran out at the door. It was pretty traumatic. Five minutes later, we would not have been able to go out that door. So, I tapped into that when I wrote the fire scene.”
Wow. That’s terrifying.
“As a writer, you store all these things up, and then go into your basket of experiences, and you get to use them.”
You also created a TikTok for the Knox. What sparked that, and how long will you keep that going?
“I’m having fun with it. I had no expectations when I started. I wasn’t big on TikTok. But having the account for the Knox itself allowed more creative freedom because I wasn’t putting myself out there — I was putting the Knox out there. So I’ve enjoyed creating these videos. Especially since the next novel is brewing in my head.”
What are you working on now?
“My next book focuses on a minor character mentioned in “The Society” — the bookstore owner, Nicholas. I was telling you earlier about those rejections — I actually wrote a short story about him years ago that was never published. It’s been living on my computer and in my head for all these years. I’m ready to tell the story. It will be another very Boston book.”
Catch Karen Winn on July 29 at Quincy’s Next Chapter Books & More.
Lauren Daley is a freelance culture writer. She can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1, and Instagrams at @laurendaley1. Read more stories on Facebook here.
Boston, MA
Carjacking suspect killed by Boston officer had lengthy record with more than 17 criminal cases, court filings show – The Boston Globe
O’Malley shot and killed a suspect in a carjacking in March. The swift decision to prosecute has prompted outrage by the police union and law enforcement officials.
O’Malley, 33, has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter for the death of Stephenson King, 39, who was shot March 11 while he allegedly tried to flee a traffic stop in a stolen car. Prosecutors determined that O’Malley had no justification for shooting at a moving vehicle.
“It is disappointing that the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office is choosing to second-guess an officer whose only goal was to protect the public,” O’Malley’s lawyer, David Yannetti, said in an email to the Globe. “We will continue to vigorously defend this officer and this case.”
“The main issue in this case will be who the aggressor really was and whether Officer O’Malley acted in lawful defense,” Yannetti wrote in court filings.
On Wednesday, Yannetti filed several defense motions in the Roxbury division of Boston Municipal Court, in an effort to illustrate “King’s mayhem and reign of terror,” spanning nearly two decades and resulting in more than 17 criminal cases across Massachusetts, court records show.
Over the years, King has been charged with strangulation, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, carjacking, breaking and entering, gun charges, and resisting arrest, according to court filings.
At the time of his death, King was free on bail for at least three separate felony cases, and had active warrants for his arrest, court records said.
O’Malley is seeking King’s mental health, criminal, and court records from all of his past cases, recordings from police body-worn and dash cameras, the medical examiner’s file on King, along with statements taken from O’Malley and witnesses at the scene of the shooting.
O’Malley told investigators that when he shot King he feared for his own life and for the life of another office on the scene, believing his colleague was about to be run over.
Police had pursued King after he allegedly committed a carjacking outside a pizza restaurant in Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood. About 15 minutes later, officers stopped the stolen car less than a mile away, at Linwood Square in Roxbury.
The driver ignored “multiple verbal commands” as officers approached and tried to drive away, police said.
King opened the car window, but did not turn the vehicle off. O’Malley drew his Taser and shouted, “Bro, I’m going to [expletive] shoot you,” the police report said.
That’s when King backed into the cruiser behind him, then maneuvered the vehicle forward and back “in an attempt to escape the police,” according to the report.
As King started to drive forward again, O’Malley fired three shots through the driver’s window, striking King, the report said.
King’s family has contended that he was experiencing a mental health crisis in the hours leading up to the deadly encounter.
In court filings, O’Malley’s lawyer, Yannetti, said King gave “O’Malley no choice that night.”
“Any suggestion that this shooting was precipitated by simply a ‘mental health crisis’ completely misses the point,” Yannetti wrote. “When facing an extremely dangerous threat, there is no time for a police officer to hold a counseling session on the street or to sit down to discuss the feelings of a menace who is intent on using a motor vehicle as a deadly weapon.”
“If a man is going to assault and carjack an innocent woman then threaten the lives and safety of the public and a police officer, that man needs to be stopped — whether he is in his right mind or not,” according to O’Malley’s motion.
O”Malley’s next court date, a probable-cause hearing, is scheduled for May 21.
Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez.
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